Swordsman Archive

Just thought I would throw in a little tidbit of info on weapon speeds. Weapon speed in SWG is your weapon delay. 2.0 speed means you will swing your sword once every 2 seconds with normal attacks. 2.8 speed means you will swing your sword every 2.8 seconds with normal attacks.

Here is a little mostly unknown fact about weapon speed in SWG. There is a "soft cap" on weapon speeds. Say you get a Two-handed curved sword that has 2.6 speed and get a speed slice on it and it lowers the speed down to 2.1. There is just one little problem with this. The game mechanics don't allow for your weapons base speed (not including skill mods) to effectively go below 2.2 speed in combat. The formula for skill speed mods is -0.1 speed per every 10 points of skill. So a Master Brawler / Master Swordsman who had a sword with 2.1 speed would actually have an effective combat delay of 1.4 speed. This is due to having +80 Two-handed weapon speed skill which is 2.2 (soft cap) - 0.8 (80 * 0.1) = 1.4 speed.

The 2.2 speed soft cap applies to every weapon in the game and there is a very good reason for this. Say you buy a Scout Blaster that is around 70-130 dmg, 1.5 speed. You get a good 35% speed slice on it which lowers it to 0.9 speed. Next you hand this pistol to a Master Pistoleer. Suddenly, you've got a Pistoleer with a pistol that has 0.1 speed. That means he would fire 10 times per second. Needless to say this can not happen. So that's why they implimented the soft cap for weapon speed. That Scout Blaster that you THOUGHT had 1.5 speed actually only has effective combat speed of 2.2. Beyond that it is 100% pointless to get a speed slice on a weapon that is already at 2.2 speed or lower. If you don't get a damage slice on that Scout Blaster I just mentioned then you will be putting out a lot less damage per second than what you are capable of.

For anyone who hasn't figured it out yet....

Your weapons actuall combat speed can be determined using this info."speed" is your weapons current written speed when you examine your weapon. IF IT HAS BELOW2.2 speed then use 2.2 speed in the formula in place of "speed" (see above for explanation of the 2.2 speed soft cap). The "skill mod" i'm referring to is your Weapon Speed Skill Mod which will be something like +30 or +40 if you are a Novice in a melee specialization class.

Your weapons actual combat speed can be determined using this formula...

speed - ( skill mod * -0.1 )

Your weapons average damage per second can be determined using this formula...

(( min dmg + max dmg ) / 2 ) / weapon speed

It would be nice if there was a decent Weaponsmith on my server who made melee weapons. So far i've yet to see a Two-handed Curved Sword with below 2.7 speed on the Ahazi server. I hope it's obvious to everyone that the lower the speed the higher the damage and the best swords i've "heard" of are 2.6 speed. If anyone knows a Weaponsmith on Ahazi who can make superior melee weapons then tell me who I should talk to.

I've seen some other people post some wierd ideas about how weapon speed works. I just want to clear things up for everything. This info has been backed up by damage parsers from various people.

I wanna change one thing to avoid possible confusion.

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Argaven wrote:

Your weapons actual combat speed can be determined using this formula...

speed - ( skill mod * -0.1 )

Your weapons average damage per second can be determined using this formula...

(( min dmg + max dmg ) / 2 ) / weapon speed

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At the line "((min dmg + max dmg) / 2 ) / weapon speed" i'm talking about the weapons actual combat speed for the "weapon speed". So that part should be the the result of the last formula.

It should probably actually say...

(( min dmg + max dmg ) / 2 ) / weapon actual combat speed

The reason you want speed faster than capis because of specials. Nobody just runs on auto attack (except the designers evidently). Everybody spams specials, and a 1.0 speed weapon with a special will be 3.0 or greater.

This is why bounty hunters are so powerful. They get 2 lines of weapon speed boosts, one from their elite profession (like pistoleer) and another from BH Pistol line. They then take very slow specials like Stopping Shot and fire them at cap speed.

FYI all old info from beta. But nobody listens to beta testers in this game.

sorry Argaven, you are wrong. Check this thread about math on speed (by holocron):

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=370235

he use the bonus values as percent incrase. +80 twohand bonus would be 80% speed incrase (without specials ), not -0.8spd

And this math match my observations. I swing my Power Hammer (6.0spd ) at something about 1.5spd with my 75 twohand bonus. Test was run on stormtrooper base without specials, 24 hits.
Well actually, my calculated speed was 1.3spd, but as i see it, its much closer to 1.5spd thet to 5.2spd.

- Micos, Heavy Swordsman Master

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dustdoc wrote:

The reason you want speed faster than cap is because of specials. Nobody just runs on auto attack (except the designers evidently). Everybody spams specials, and a 1.0 speed weapon with a special will be 3.0 or greater.

This is why bounty hunters are so powerful. They get 2 lines of weapon speed boosts, one from their elite profession (like pistoleer) and another from BH Pistol line. They then take very slow specials like Stopping Shot and fire them at cap speed.

FYI all old info from beta. But nobody listens to beta testers in this game.

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I disagree. Speed beyond the cap has no impact on specials. Speed in general has no impact on specials speed.
All specials have a certain timer before they fire off, often this seems to be around 2.5 seconds. I base this on my own observations.

no, i hit 1 spd easy with my curved sword (2.6spd) and twohandArea2
Speed do has impact on specials.

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Micos99 wrote:
no, i hit 1 spd easy with my curved sword (2.6spd) and twohandArea2
Speed do has impact on specials.

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So what you're saying is you fire off a special attack every second? That's not how I see it working.

?????????????

i thgought the weapon spped cap was 1 sec, not 2.2, **edit** are you talking about? my BH hit specials every sec. my noviceswordsman just bought a 2 sec 2 hand curved sword, and i sure hit faster than 2.2 sec

I looked into it last time this topic came up. I turned on time stamps on my logs and did some research. I use a 2.6 curved 2h sword and am a master with +75 2h speed bonus. I hit once per second with it, including with specials. I guarantee that I hit with this weapon once per second. Looking at the logs, this is an obvious conclusion. That is, 10 hits take 10 seconds, for example, 20 takes 20 seconds, and so forth.

It was my understanding that the formula for attack speed was:

attack_speed = speed_of_weapon * (1 - skill/100), capped at 1.0

The 1.0 speed cap has been verified and confirmed by Holocron. Not to mention, it's clearly borne out in game. I have yet to see any sort of proof to the contrary.

Ivy

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i thgought the weapon spped cap was 1 sec, not 2.2, **edit** are you talking about? my BH hit specials every sec. my noviceswordsman just bought a 2 sec 2 hand curved sword, and i sure hit faster than 2.2 sec

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the hardcap is 1.0 spd. NOTHING will go below 1 second per hit. What a softcap is, is a cap set by the standards the devs have made for crafting a weapon, which can only be increased by mods or special items. But i do not agree with the orginial poster. I have had pistoleers spamming me every 1-1.3 seconds with specials. Extremely fast and this is coming from my first hand experience.

Can you post some links to thoes damage parses?

Because that softcap sounds pretty wierd, which is more like a hardcap. I'd like to see the tests they have done.

The speed formula is fairly well-known and well-tested. The Pistoleer FAQ on the Pistoleer forums is probably the easiest place to find it (although it's in other places as well).

The speed mod is just a percentage reduction on the delay. +80 weapon speed literally means you'll be swinging or firing 5 times faster than someone with 0 weapon speed, with the cap delay being 1 second.

Specials all have a delay multiplier. A special with a 2x delay multiplier means your next delay will be twice as long as it would be if you were not using a style. This multiplication happens -before- cap, so it's possible to cap speed while using specials if you have sufficient amount of speed.

If you have +100 speed, you have 1s delay on any attack with any weapon (of that type, of course - the calculated value is actually 0s, but it caps at 1s).

There is no evidence of a 'soft cap' of any form. If you think you have contrary evidence, please post it. Relevant information would be your speed mod, weapon stats, and methodology used to establish the weapon speed.

Noules000, thank you for the most informative reply. Are you absolutely sure that the special multiplier is applied before the speed cap? This is critical.

Also, do you have any accurate info on what the multipliers are for various specials?